utpal – Page 17 – Perfection Journey

Day 40…Our Spirituality Is Real (July 26)

This morning Vasu passed one of his last great milestones before he reaches his finish line early next week. A handful of people were there ringing small shiny bells and there were enthusiastic shouts and hoorays for him after he completed 2700 miles. He didn’t slow down or pause for a picture. He will only stop when he reaches the finish line.

It will be his 7th straight finish and most likely he will once again be this years champion. When I ask him this morning if he is having a good day he replies with absolute sincerity, “Every day is a good day.”

Vasu says that for him, even though it is so enticingly close, he cannot yet see the finish line but he feels it calling to him. “I try to be happy every day.”

Kobi runs very fast right from the beginning each day. “He runs fast and he inspires me to also run faster. It is good very good.”

Tomorrow the Enthusiasm Awakeners will be celebrating their anniversary. “They are very important to us. In the morning we are a little bit sleepy, we have no energy for running. But when the Enthusiasm Awakeners come and we feel how they feed us inwardly and we become happy. We increase our speed.”

“I am very grateful to Sri Chinmoy for creating this group, and to all the girls who participate. It is very very nice. I am very grateful.”

Vasu says that his focus for this race has been the importance of spirituality and music. “They have given me the energy to run this race. I think they are also very good for our regular lives. Without spirituality we cannot do this race. We cannot run. We cannot be happy.”

“When we are sleepy or our consciousness low we can pray and meditate and listen to music and then become full of energy. Our spirituality is real. It elevates us to another level in our consciousness. It is also very useful in our regular lives.”

The Board at the Start of Day 40 *Note totals may not be accurate…Magic number is 2,324*

Early

Continue reading “Day 40…Our Spirituality Is Real (July 26)”

Day 39… Every Day Is Precious (July 25)

This morning nothing seemed to be going right. Weather issues, technical problems, and a general case of the early morning grumbles. The trajectory of the day was not going up and neither was my drone, due to rain. Generally it felt, that whatever could go wrong was in fact…. going wrong.

My interview schedule was topsy turvy and I was getting a little desperate. So I turned to Smarana, and asked for an interview, and he said yes. And it was not just a grudging yes, it was one of those sweet, deep, and grateful yes’s that in an instant melted away my woes.

We started our run with him carrying an umbrella in a light rain. The weather affects the runners in all kinds of ways, and even though it wasn’t raining heavily it was humid and the air was thick. He said it makes his legs heavy, and makes it difficult. He adds, “I am becoming more sensitive to the heat.”

When I ask whether or not he is looking for it all to be over, “There are two hearts beating inside of me. One wants it all to be over with and the other one feels that every day is so precious out here.”

“There is such precious energy out here and it is inspiring to see the runners who are still struggling. They know that they have to hit certain numbers in order to finish. The pressure they have and how they are dealing with it, is really nice.”

Smarana has also been inspired by all those who are selflessly working at the race. “Yesterday I was just in awe watching Sahishnu clean the food bar. He had such dedication and love while he was cleaning it.”

“Mario comes here after working a 12 hour shift in an intensive care unit and comes and gives massages to the runners, and then thanks them for coming to him for a massage.”

“There is such a high moral and spiritual standard here. You can just absorb it every day. It is really nice.”

“At the moment this is home but I know this game. You want to go to the beach or something like that and then when you get to the beach it is kind of boring. You are always longing to do something else. But at the moment I am enjoying being here. I know I can’t finish the race but I know it is just me and the course, with all the other runners and the helpers.”

“There is no outer glory. I am just doing it for my own spiritual development.”

The Board at the Start of Day 39… *Note totals may not be accurate..The magic number is 2,246*

Early camp

Continue reading “Day 39… Every Day Is Precious (July 25)”

Day 38… My Heart’s Loving Oneness (July 24 )

“I have never run the 3100 mile race but I have always participated from its very inception as a volunteer.” This morning Vajra handed me a short commentary that reflects both his feelings and his long long history with the race.

He didn’t write a lot and his words fit into 3 compact paragraphs. They are a collection of humble words coming from a man who has spent his summers for the past 23 years living and breathing the Sri Chinmoy Self-Transcendence 3100 mile race.

“So many of the runners now have reached a point where their bodies have reached an equilibrium. Their bodies have gotten used to all the difficulties and they are now pacing themselves till they reach the end.”

“The human spirit as we know it is infinite, limitless, and boundless. There are many words you can use to express something that is ever transcending. This race represents exactly that.”

“As long as you have the opportunity to present to people something that will entice them to endure more of what they can unlimitlessly achieve. This race will always be here to attract those people to run it.”

Vajra believes that Sri Chinmoy created the race, “to get people to believe and understand that there is something within them that is way beyond their own minds capacity to understand, that they are limitless, in every way.”

Asked why he has taken on the most thankless jobs over the years he says, “while I am doing all that, I am actually living through the runners. I am seeing and feeling what they are seeing and feeling. I am also, in a way, running in and through them. This is based just upon my heart’s loving oneness with them.”

“Consequently what they feel I feel. So this keeps me going. As long as I have this oneness with them I will be able to continue to run this race and do whatever activities I am called upon to do, as long as the race exists.”

The Board at the Start of Day 38…* Note totals may not be accurate… Magic number is 2,205 miles *

Camp early

Continue reading “Day 38… My Heart’s Loving Oneness (July 24 )”

Day 37… This Is Real Life (July 23 )

“I love it, of course I always loved it when they would sing when I was running.” Sunday morning I caught up with Suprabha after she had been singing with the Enthusiasm Awakeners singing group. “It brightens the morning for the runners.”

Suprabha has a phenomenal history here at the Self-Transcendence 3100 mile race. She ran and completed the first 13 races accumulating a total of 40,300 miles on the course. Then if you add the first 2,700 mile race in 1996, well you can do the math. The circumference of the earth is just 24,901 miles.

Asked if she had any doubts going into that first big race. “I guess I never ever thought whether or not it was possible to do it. I had enough inspiration and direction from Sri Chinmoy. He taught how to do one step at a time, one hour at a time, one day at a time.”

Interviewed during her 10th race in 2006, she said, “There are always new surprises in each race.” She took delight in the sheer volume of miles she was collecting over her many, many ultra races.

Ted Corbitt in 2005 was amazed that she kept coming back to the race. “It is amazing, just amazing.”

Suprabha, besides singing with the girls singing group, had also done a couple of shifts counting. “I felt I was here to be part of the race again. It invokes all kinds of feelings. That this is really my home and once you come back it feels as though you never left. I just felt the power of the race.”

She says that for her to be at the race, “This is real life, and this is Sri Chinmoy’s world. Everything else is kind of an illusion.”

My heart runs
The world’s longest race,
And not my mind.
My Lord runs ahead of me;
My breath runs behind.

6 August 2005
New York

Sri Chinmoy, My Race-Prayers, part 2, Agni Press, 2006

Continue reading “Day 37… This Is Real Life (July 23 )”

Day 36… Patience Light (July 22)

For all those hungry for instant gratification the Self-Transcendence 3100 mile race is not for you. This morning when I proclaim to Ushika the obvious, that this is his 36th day on the course. He says, “Wow, what a journey.”

One thing in addition, that is also obvious about Ushika’s race is that he is running stronger now, after running more than 2,000 miles, than he did earlier in the race. Early on for a short period he struggled to make the quota. “Physically to do this is not possible. But even the physical here has to bow to consciousness. This is the reason I can do that.”

Ushika tells me that one of the helpers of the race was leaving to go to Europe and he wanted to run a lap with him. “He was all in his heart. Almost crying totally touched by the experience of the race. Ushika, you know what. I feel in my heart that you can increase your mileage. Your body may be tired but I feel that you can do more now. He has a oneness heart. That is what I feel.” After this conversation he ran 65 miles, his best since day one. He said the inspiration did not come from the outer plane.

He then tells me that over the bunk in the van where he rests is a picture of a spider web and a poem written by Sri Chinmoy

Spider, my spider,
You build your home
With patience-light.
Against the speedy time
You and your confidence-fight.
You teach the world
What patience can do:
Build perfection’s kingdom
pure and true.

Sri Chinmoy, Animal Kingdom, Agni Press, 1973

“When I saw that picture and the quote I was totally shocked. In a positive way. It happened 2 or 3 weeks into the race that I saw it. I realized then that patience is the topic of my race. It is such a powerful quality. It has definitely added to the experience I am having here. For me it is the main quality of my race and my learning process.”

“This is the first race that I could exercise this quality by the Supreme’s grace.

The 2137 miles he could have run east from his home in Salzburg

Ushika feels that as a child he was very impatient. When he became a student of Sri Chinmoy he felt he acquired some degree of patience. This he could use in his business dealings but felt he didn’t have it with himself.

“In many of my other races things went wrong because of my impatience. In this race patience is an outer blessing because the race is so big. I have been able, right from the beginning, to have patience. The first 10 days of the race I was far behind with mileage, but I never felt that I had to push it, to get to the 109 laps.”

Ushika says also that the arrival of his first helper Patanga made a huge difference in his race. “Then I was able to do the required mileage.”

Yesterday the rain was quite heavy. “In the rain you need a lot of patience.” He also describes that he was having a problem lifting his legs high enough. “I had my third fall, and I tripped most powerfully a few times. So I sorted out the parts of the track where I run, I walk, and I go slow. This worked for yesterday’s rain.”

The Board at the Start of Day 36 … *Note totals may not be accurate. Magic number is 2086 *

Heavy thundershowers late in the day

Continue reading “Day 36… Patience Light (July 22)”

Day 35… My Life Is Here (July 21)

Kobi Oren, after several thousand miles and 34 days of running continues to surprise and amaze me. His focused efforts in the hours he is running on the course is always swift and always powerful. At the same time he is able to give a clear and delicate interpretation to the mystical side of the race. A balance of the inner and outer that is extraordinary for someone who is taking part in the Self-Transcendence 3100 mile race for the first time.

“It is hard work. There are various seconds that I enjoy. My eldest son arrived recently so with that I had a lot of seconds of joy. His coming to the race was a very important moment for me.”

Kobi has a quota of mileage he wants to accomplish each day. Yesterday he ran 66 miles. “It is very hard to be here. It is a hard world being here.” At the same time after completing 2300 miles this morning he says the finish line is becoming just a little more clear for him.

He describes that his life has become so immersed in the race that, “I don’t remember what was before. It is like that I have been here all my life. So I don’t know what will be after this. This experience consumes everything. My entire life is here. I know that there is a lot of me out there. But I am not living that now. So I really don’t know what will happen at the end. The end is something that I wish for and something that I desire for, but I can’t imagine what will be there the day after.”

“This is more than the here and now. This event has its own life. Before the race I thought it was going to be a journey, a quest, a voyage. Like in mythology when the hero goes to find a golden feather and then he gets the Kingdom. But now I know that this is something completely different. This is something like a pilgrimage.”

“You need to do things here in a certain manner. There won’t be any golden feather here. There won’t be a kingdom. It is a ritual. A very very long ritual to find out who you are.”

The Board at the Start of Day 35 *Note the totals may not be accurate…. The magic number is 2,026*

Camp early

Kobi and Vajra

Continue reading “Day 35… My Life Is Here (July 21)”

Day 34… Gratitude Everywhere (July 20)

Kaneenika jokes this morning as she reaches the corner where are interview is to take place. “It is too bad I couldn’t take a shortcut to avoid you.”

Of course over the past 33 days she has not cut any corners, shirked her responsibilities, or failed in any way to dedicate herself tirelessly to this enormous task she has once again taken upon herself to do.

She tells me that the first hours of the race, “are very hard for me in the morning to get going.”

Kaneenika did 116 laps yesterday an amount that equals 63 miles. It is her most since day 1 of the race. At the end of the day her total was 1945 miles, just 21 miles off the pace. Asked if she is anyway putting in a special effort to catch up. She says, “I am just doing what I can.”

“I don’t think I am pushing too much. I have to stay focused. I am not pushing to the extent that I am going to hurt myself or anything.”

“I think there is a big part of surrendering here. Sometimes I feel like, how can I go on. Then I tell myself just relax, it will come. That is how it happens here.” She says that when she does try and push it doesn’t seem to work. “On other times it feels like someone is pushing me. That happens only when I really surrender, and let it go.”

“One afternoon I was having a really hard time. I was passing through the camp and I overheard one of the race directors speaking to another race director. He was asking if he could go. The other said, we are okay you can go.”

“So then I said what about me. Do you need me? Can I go.”

“He looked at me and said yes. We need you to go around. Sri Chinmoy needs you to go around. After he said that, those words stayed with me. I was reflecting on them. I felt so privileged. More than that, I started feeling gratitude.”

“I felt gratitude everywhere. In each blade of grass. In each leaf on the tree. I was gasping for breath. The gratitude was pouring down upon me. So after that I thanked the race director for what he said.”

“Then I realized why we are really here. This race is not just for us. It is for the Supreme and it is for humanity.”

The Board at the Start of Day 34…*Note totals may not be accurate… Magic number is 1,966*

Early

A reminder left by Bipin of what the course looks like sometimes in winter

Continue reading “Day 34… Gratitude Everywhere (July 20)”

Day 33… Progress Inside (July 19)

“I still need to work to get to the finish line.” Vasu’s long endless summer of running is now drawing closer and closer to a sweet conclusion. Over the last 32 days he has run 2212 miles and so now has less than 900 more to go.

Something, at the pace he is currently running, he may well accomplish in a personal best and will allow him legitimately to be acknowledged as one who has self transcended himself. How he is judged for his extraordinary courage, fortitude, and sweetness is something that we fallible humanity have not the wisdom nor vision to properly assess. Though I for one am always awed and humbled to be in his presence.

It is with Vasu’s seemingly endless enthusiasm and dedication that I am most impressed with. When I speak to him about the work he is doing he says, “I get here much more joy and happiness. Because here it is so nice. We run here, we are inspired here, and we inspire other people, and they also inspire us.”

“For me alone it is not possible to do this race. We do it together. Some do it consciously and some do it unconsciously.”

“The runners here are one family. We try to inspire each other. It helps us and it helps everybody. I think the race this year is very important. If our consciousness is good we just fly if your consciousness is not so good then we must walk, or sleep, or do something else. I think we are making progress here. I think we must make progress inside. When you are in a good consciousness then you can run easily.”

Vasu feels that any experienced multi day runner should look seriously at taking part in this race. But their decision should be based on a deep inner feeling that they should participate.

The Board at the Start of Day 33 …*Note the totals may not be accurate… the magic number is 1907*

Early

Continue reading “Day 33… Progress Inside (July 19)”

Day 32… Best You Can (July 18)

It is easy to be impressed when someone accomplishes a great achievement. But it is even more inspiring when you can also become aware of the inner strength of that same person. The true and most significant qualities that are immeasurable and yet are the most important part of any act of self transcendence.

4 years ago William was miles behind in his quest to complete his first 3100 mile race. Yet somehow he came back with surprising determination and focus in order to succeed. To understand even a little of how he found the capacity to do such a thing is to become aware of what a remarkable figure William Sichel really is.

This year his situation is even more dire. This morning he is 72 miles back and has now just 20 days left in order to make it up. What is admirable in William is of course that there is no surrender, there is n0 giving up. He and his team are committed to being here and doing their absolute best until there is no time left to do even one more lap.

When we talk this morning I joke with him whether he ever wished he had stuck with Ping Pong a sport he was once very talented in. “The honest answer is yes.” (Laughs)

“This is not the sort of race you enjoy all the time. You are not having fun all the time. You have all the emotions probably every day. Certainly when you get to the end the overriding feeling and emotion is that you are glad that you did it. The experience can only be gained by being here the compete 52 days.”

“There are moments in my day when I feel that this is the best thing that I could possibly be doing. But you have to be here for the duration in order to get those experiences. You can’t come for a couple of days and get them. You need to be here day in and day out to get into the state. As someone said to me the clue of the race is all about is in its name, Self-Transcendence. It is not the 3100 mile race it is the self-transcendence 3100 mile race.”

“To get into that state you just have to grind it out. Day after day, week after week, whatever the weather. That is the nature of the beast.”

William feels that for him self transcendence means reaching a higher mental state. That can only be achieved by doing something unusual. You can’t just wake up in the morning and go for a walk and say …..I am self transcending. It is a higher state of mind that can only be achieved by attempting extraordinary feats.”

William says that because of the length of the 3100 mile race no other event compares. “It takes you to a state that you can’t achieve in shorter events. You have to be doing the best you can every day. It has all to do with the effort, and the commitment to the event. My aim is to cover the greatest possible distance every day.”

“I am here to the stroke of midnight every night. I am not cutting for home. That is the way I do it and that is the way I want to do it. By doing that I am doing myself justice.”

The Board at the Start of Day 32…* Note totals may not be accurate… Magic number is 1,847*

It is even a little cool this morning

Continue reading “Day 32… Best You Can (July 18)”

Day 31… Transformation of Nature (July 17)

From the very instant the race starts time starts to disappear. Yes on day one, 52 days looks like a giant piggy bank filled to overflowing with time. A runner at the start tries to gather up as many extra miles as they can. Knowing full well that bad days, ones in which you were unable to run 109 laps just might and also quite likely might happen when you least expect it.

No 3100 mile runner ever wishes to be in the deficit category. It is hard to regain those precious laps and as the race progresses past the half way point the task of regaining them gets so much harder. So what do you do when the tipping point arrives and there is simply not enough time to get them back.

Last year Smarana faced this predicament and now, with just 3 weeks left it looks as though he has arrived at this same place again. He starts the day with 1722 miles when he really needs to have 1,788 miles, the magic number. The race of course draws runners to this monumental task who are extraordinary and who view their lives here in ways that artfully straddle both outer achievement and inner progress. Quite often, as Sopan said yesterday, the race is really all about the inner experience.

Today Smarana says he wants to use the next 21 days to become a better person. “I am really getting my money’s worth here.”

“My focus is shifting more and more on the transformation of my nature. My focus on running is going more to the background. I see the race more and more as a stage for experiences to help transform my nature. In my first 7 races I was just able to push through. Now there has been a shift.”

“I feel as though I have a more conscious awareness of what’s happening. Maybe I have gone a little too far in the self transformation. (Laughs) You don’t have any real control here. I just want to be more conscious and feel and see and commit myself more. Previously I was just pushing through.”

“Every day is just, day to day, and from one break to the next. 21 days is really quite a lot. I remember the first time I did the race and had completed 21 days and when I realized I had another 31 days my mind was just in shock. It took me 2 days just to calm down. You just have to break it down day by day.”

Smarana feels that right now he is better able to experience the race. Observe the things he needs to learn and accept the inner experiences that he needs in order to become a better person. “Of course I wanted to have both the outer thing to finish the race and also the inner thing the transformation aspect.”

It rained late this afternoon

The board at the Start of Day 31 *Totals may not be accurate… Magic number is 1,788*

Camp early

Continue reading “Day 31… Transformation of Nature (July 17)”